


The Weight of Water

by phant0m



Category: Yu-Gi-Oh! Duel Monsters (Anime & Manga)
Genre: Established Relationship, Fluff/Comfort, M/M, also post-canon, and that's once again the fic, and they're boyfriends, basically a sequel to my last fic, jounouchi is going through it and kaiba helps him work it out, the best tag i can think of to use for this
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-08
Updated: 2021-02-08
Packaged: 2021-03-13 23:40:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,288
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29286939
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/phant0m/pseuds/phant0m
Summary: “What?” Something heavy and red claws at Jounouchi’s rib cage, scales and wingtips, the dragon unfurling. He shakes his head, realizes his arms are shaking too with the force of his hold on the railing, clenches his jaw. “No, ‘course not, never. I’d do anythin’ I could to keep her outta there even if she did wanna come back. It was hell. She doesn’t deserve that.”“But you believe that you do?”
Relationships: Jounouchi Katsuya/Kaiba Seto | Seto Kaiba/Joey Wheeler
Comments: 12
Kudos: 26





	The Weight of Water

**Author's Note:**

> I'm back at it again to haunt you at some ungodly hour of the morning. I really wanted to write a sort of sequel to [Green All Year Long](https://archiveofourown.org/works/29131332) that dug deeper into one of Jounouchi's more offhand comments ("I'm sure you gotta know how complicated it is...") and then I saw [this Tweet](https://twitter.com/queerlitbot/status/1356767607844700160?s=20) and knew precisely what vibes I wanted to bring to this. You don't have to have read Green All Year Long prior to this, it works perfectly fine as a standalone which is why I'm not linking the two in a series, but the end especially will have more context if the two are read in sequential order. This got heavier because it slipped into vent writing from Personal Experience™️ but is still, at its heart, self-indulgent soft boyfriend content that just happened to lean more in the direction of 'I write about what Jounouchi does for Kaiba a lot but rarely the opposite and now my third eye has opened and I need to fulfill the prophecy'. Let's go. Enjoy!
> 
> (Because I like to give content warnings: there are absolutely no outright mentions of what transpired in Jounouchi's relationship with his father, but I'm sure you can see the implications based on Everything Else I've Ever Written, so just a heads up on that.)

No one warned Jounouchi that a new apartment could feel like this at night.

He’s slept away from home plenty, after all -- so much so that the term ‘home’ probably belongs more to Yuugi’s couch, Honda’s futon, or Kaiba’s bed than it does to the house he grew up in. He never gets homesick. He doesn’t even know what that would feel like. It’s not this, he knows: staring up at the dim fluorescence cast on the ceiling above him, smelling phantom traces of beer and cigarettes, missing nothing. This is something else, the inverse; a disease from the home, not for it. It’s followed him here, that room and his father, and some places are only haunted because of the people within them.

Even with Kaiba beside him, it’s too quiet. Jounouchi can’t sleep. Every time he dozes off and there’s a distant engine roar from the street or a thud from a neighboring apartment he jerks awake cold, sure it’s something else, something worse, that what’s followed him here will catch him off-guard and vulnerable in the night. He’s exhausted.

He slips from beneath the blanket and stands with as much grace as he can manage, but whether from the creak of the floorboards or the tense way he often knows Jounouchi better than he knows himself, Kaiba stirs anyway.

“Katsuya.” He doesn’t sound drowsy, but then Jounouchi supposes it was foolish to expect that he was ever actually sleeping to begin with. Behind him, fabric rustles and an electronic light cuts through the room, brief before it’s dark again. “It’s one in the morning. Where are you going?”

“Uh.” Jounouchi’s eyes dart around before landing on the sliding glass door. Right. Fresh air will help. He can’t taste ash on his tongue outside. He jerks a thumb towards the balcony, looks back over his shoulder, trying on a smile that’s too large. “Can’t sleep, so I thought I’d check out the balcony. We were too busy to go out there earlier.”

Whether from the waver of his voice or that unfathomable understanding, Kaiba sighs, sits up, and says, “I’m coming with you.”

It’s a humid night, and the promise of rain washes Jounouchi’s senses clean. The view from the balcony isn’t much to speak of, concrete parking lot, amber light, but it’s his so he takes it anyway and breathes it in deep. He lays his hands on the iron railing, damp to the touch, and curls his fingers in between its columns.

Kaiba leans his back against the railing, next to him but not close enough to intrude, arms crossed. Jounouchi doesn’t need to see his face to know how Kaiba must be looking at him, critical and analyzing. The warmth on the back of his neck prickles all the same.

“Are you going to tell me the real reason you wanted to come out here?”

A normal person would probably say _are you okay_ , but Kaiba knows him too well. Knows how hideous it feels to broach such a subject without being invited to, knows Jounouchi would just nod and smile and say _of course_ , and if he’s never afforded Kaiba the luxury of hiding something then Kaiba sure as hell isn’t going to let him have it himself. It’s romantic, in a way, the question or at least the thought behind it. It’s the kind of thing only Kaiba would ask him.

“I dunno. Movin’ here, leavin’ everything behind...” Jounouchi tilts his head up to the sky. The clouds are black and greedy, already full of impending storm and still trying to eat the breeze too. It’s not the question he meant to ask, but maybe it is; an exorcism isn’t always so straightforward. “Do you think I’m doin’ the right thing?”

“Yes. In fact, I’m of the opinion that you’re doing the best thing you possibly can be right now. I only wish it had happened sooner.”

Kaiba has never once made an acquaintance of hesitance or a friend of dishonesty. He speaks with conviction, as if somehow he already knew what he was going to be asked and was sure of his answer before he needed to say it at all. They both have more skeletons than keepsakes in their closets, and Kaiba has always struggled with his more than he has, often needed more in the way of breaking bones, but sometimes Jounouchi envies him. The strength and surety of him. It’s forged from fire, solid and steel, and he’s certain it can’t be taken from him. On nights like these, Jounouchi isn’t so confident the same is true for himself.

“Okay, good.” Jounouchi grips the railing and leans against it, gaze on the street. “It’s just hard, I guess. Gettin’ used to it. Tryin’ not to feel guilty about it. Nobody gives you a handbook about this kinda thing.”

“That’s your specialty, isn’t it? I’ve never once known you to shy away from something because it was difficult.” _Like me_ , Kaiba doesn’t say, but it lingers in the pause anyway. Jounouchi likes it when Kaiba’s voice is like this: mellow and unhurried, yet still firm. It feels centered and grounding, the way Kaiba has confessed on late nights that Jounouchi feels to him, and isn’t it a wonder how they can both become soil when either of them starts losing petals? “Nor have I known you to play by the rules. You’ll write your own handbook and find loopholes in it regardless.”

Jounouchi bites his lower lip and drops his head down. The warmth is on his cheeks now. He almost smiles, this time one that fits. “Guess you’re right.” Something substantial, something to think on, but still not to the heart of it yet. The heart of it beats in the center of the parking lot three stories below, discarded. “I think it’s just that he’s still my dad, y’know? He’s gettin’ older and he still won’t stop drinkin’, so I keep thinkin’, like, what if somethin’ happens and I’m not there?” The words crack at the edges, and, tired, he lets them. “I can’t stop thinkin’ about him. About bein’ back there. I don’t know if I can handle bein’ the one who left him alone.”

There it is. The ugly fact of it fished from asphalt and garbage. Miles away, thunder rolls, reverberating through the empty void confession leaves. The silence makes him anxious, but forgiveness always begs patience.

“Allow me to ask you something.” If there were a storm, if this were the sea, Kaiba’s voice would be a lighthouse. He’s rhythmic and tranquil and promising sand. “Shizuka has been gone since your youth and has continued to make the conscious choice to keep her distance. Do you think ill of her for that?”

“What?” Something heavy and red claws at Jounouchi’s rib cage, scales and wingtips, the dragon unfurling. He shakes his head, realizes his arms are shaking too with the force of his hold on the railing, clenches his jaw. “No, ‘course not, never. I’d do anythin’ I could to keep her outta there even if she did wanna come back. It was hell. She doesn’t deserve that.”

“But you believe that you do?”

That question, Jounouchi thinks, must be romantic for the way it winds him. His lips part. His grip relaxes. The slain dragon slumbers. He stares, wide-eyed, at the parking lot lights. There are moths fluttering near them. Something so obvious he’d fail to recognize it.

“That’s what I thought.”

Kaiba touches the back of his right hand, a nonverbal cue to meet his eyes. Jounouchi does, slow, that blue dark as the night sky and twice as fortunate.

“Always so compassionate,” Kaiba says, low and calm and holding his gaze with the sheer force of his own, “towards everyone but yourself.”

“Yeah,” Jounouchi breathes, tapping his fingers against the railing, “yeah, I know. I’m… I’m tryin’.”

“We both are.” 

It takes someone with a powerful sense of the present, Kaiba had told him once beneath the stars, to recognize a moment you know you won’t forget. The stars may be sleeping now, but that doesn’t stop Jounouchi from knowing this is one of them. Kaiba’s body language has changed, become something with more tender give to it, his arms at his sides and his hand still resting near Jounouchi’s on the railing. He looks at Jounouchi less like he’s calculating whether or not Jounouchi will let him in, and more like now that he’s in he’s trying to gauge how long it’s appropriate to wait before kissing him senseless.

It’s near surreal, this moment, lightning flashing across their faces. For a moment, Kaiba looks like the boy he used to know, so regal with pride, so stubborn, but he becomes a man again in the dark. A man who has stumbled on the path of healing but dug his spiteful teeth into the sun to keep himself steady, who is here and trying with him. Nothing else above them could have more powerful an orbit than Kaiba.

“You’re right,” Jounouchi says, and with the admission the weight of water rolls off of him in waves, leaving him still alive on the shore. “You’re right. I don’t deserve that. And whatever happens…”

“It isn’t your fault.” Kaiba’s hand slips over his, covers it, long fingers frigid against scrapes on his knuckles. “None of this has ever been your fault, nor should you shoulder any blame for choosing to keep yourself safe. Perhaps you should listen more closely to the sort of things you tell me.”

“Easier said than done, and also the pot callin’ the kettle black.” It’s a weak sort of teasing, but weakness is fond and open and buds at dawn. “Besides, you’re a liar.”

Kaiba raises an eyebrow. One thing that hasn’t changed: he’ll always take the bait. “How so?”

“You always told me you aren’t good at comfortin’ people. That’s straight up bullshit.”

“Hm. Does stating facts truly qualify as comforting?”

Jounouchi huffs in a way that isn’t quite laughter, but feels just as good.

“You know damn well what I mean.”

“I do, I just believe you’re giving me undue credit. You would have reached this point eventually with or without me.”

“Yeah, see, I’m not so sure about that.”

Tilting his head so his eyes catch the buzz of orange from the lights below, Kaiba’s mouth curves in a way that isn’t quite a smile, but looks just as flattering.

“If I am capable of having this much faith in you every day,” Kaiba says, “then so are you.”

They’re not the sort of people to say _I love you_ often, if at all, but love has wings and you can hear it when it lands. The tears stinging at the backs of Jounouchi’s eyes, like the thunder, tell him that it’s here to roost. Yet it’s Kaiba who bridges the distance between them, knowing now he’s waited long enough, tilting Jounouchi’s head up and kissing him. It’s Kaiba who sighs against his mouth like this is rite and prayer, who laces their fingers together on the railing and holds Jounouchi steady when his hands tremble as he clutches at Kaiba’s shirt. So that means it’s Jounouchi’s turn to shake apart, but if his heart beats like a searching moth then Kaiba is amber light.

Which is his, so he takes it, dragging Kaiba in and kissing him long enough that the crying stops. Biting back shame when the pads of Kaiba’s fingers wipe away the tear tracks in its wake. Letting Kaiba be the one to guide him into a rare hug, his face against Kaiba’s neck, their hands touching hip, waist, back. Jounouchi leans against him, allows himself support against the solid and steel, keeps dear what it feels like to be so cared for. To be something divine.

“You should plant something out here while the weather is still decent.”

Jounouchi laughs, quiet and weary. “Since when do you care about gardenin’?”

“I don’t. You deserve to be surrounded by things like you.”

“Plants?”

“That which lives and flourishes.”

Photosynthesis, the act of every cell in Jounouchi’s body soaking in the words and consuming them to radiate thanks. He closes his eyes, a grin on his face and heat up the hard ridge of his spine. How lucky he is to be here. How worthy of joy.

He doesn’t say _your bite-marked sun is the reason I know which direction to grow in_ , but he thinks it so loud he’s sure Kaiba can hear it even as he mutters at the drizzle and leads them back inside. He closes the door just before the storm breaks.

In bed, Kaiba doesn’t hold him. He entwines their fingers beneath the blanket and traces his thumb over the veins in Jounouchi’s wrist, his leaves, which is more than enough in the thick of summer. Jounouchi leans his head against Kaiba’s shoulder and listens to the torrent of rain outside, muffling any sound that might startle him. This close, he can’t smell anything but the faint dark earth of Kaiba’s cologne settling into the soft skin of his throat. He waits for illness to grip him and it doesn’t. His pulse thrums just right under Kaiba’s touch. So maybe the spectres are gone, or maybe they’ll be back, but it’s all about timing and presence and faith in the end.

That and somewhere safe for his roots to grow, which is not so much a place as a person.

“Seto?”

Kaiba turns his face towards Jounouchi, breath ghosting against his wet mussed hair. “Yes?”

Jounouchi settles against him, thinking of how you bind plant stems together to keep both upright.

“I’m glad you stayed.”

**Author's Note:**

> Haha balcony scenes go brrr. Anyway, this is the part where I remind you I have a [Twitter](https://twitter.com/sageances) that I use to say absolute nonsense words at 7AM. Stay safe and healthy, everyone! ♡


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